“Your mother? Is she here? She doesn’t know me a bit.”
“Oh, she knows of you. She will know, without even my asking her, who
you are. You haven’t let me hear from you for a long time.”
“Oh, I often wanted to write, but nothing came of it. For some time
past I have felt I should find you. I was waiting for it every day.”
He pushed his arm through mine and we went on. Tranquillity seemed to
emanate from him and pass on to me. We were soon chatting together as
formerly. We mentioned our schooldays, the confirmation class and that
unlucky meeting of ours in the holidays--only no mention was made of
the earliest and closest bond between us, of the affair with Frank
Kromer.
Unexpectedly we found ourselves in the middle of a singular and ominous
conversation. Having recalled Demian’s discourse with the Japanese,
we spoke of student life in general and from that we had branched
off to something else, which seemed to be rather out of the way of
the former trend of our talk. Nevertheless, from Demian’s manner of
introducing the subject, there seemed to be no lack of coherence in our
conversation.
He spoke of the spirit of Europe, and of modern tendencies. Everywhere,
he said, reigned a desire to come together, to form herds, but nowhere
was freedom or love. All this life in common, from the student clubs
and choral societies to the state, was an unnatural, forced phenomenon.
The community owed its origin to a sense of fear, of embarrassment, to
a desire for flight; inwardly it was rotten and old, and approaching a
general break-up.
“Community,” Demian said, “is a beautiful thing. But what we see
blossoming everywhere is by no means that. It will arise anew from the
mutual understanding of individuals, and after a time the world will be
remodeled. What is now called community is merely a formation of herds.
Mankind seeks refuge together because men have fear of one another--the
masters combine for their own ends, the workmen for theirs, and the
intellectuals for theirs! And why are they afraid? One is only afraid
when one is not at one with oneself. They are afraid because they
have never had the courage to be themselves. A community of men who
are afraid of the unknown in themselves! They all feel that the laws
of their life no longer hold good, that they are living according to
outworn commandments. Neither their religion nor their morals conform
to our needs. For a hundred years and more Europe has simply studied
and built factories. They know exactly how many grams of powder it
takes to kill a man, but they do not know how to pray to God. They
have no idea how to amuse themselves, even for an hour. Look at these
students drinking in their tavern! Or take any place of amusement
where rich people go! Hopeless! My dear Sinclair, no cheerfulness,
no serenity can come of all that. These creatures, who move about so
uneasily in crowds, are full of fear and full of wickedness, no one
trusts the other. They adhere to ideals which have ceased to exist,
and they stone everyone who proposes a new one. I feel that there
are troubles ahead of us. They will come, believe me, they will come
soon! Of course the world won’t be bettered! Whether the workmen kill
the manufacturers, or whether the Russians and Germans shoot at one
another, it will only be a change of proprietors. But it will not be
in vain. It will free the world from the chains of present-day ideals,
there will be a clearing away of Stone-Age gods. The world, as it is
now, wants to die, it wants to perish, and it will.”
“And what will happen to us then?” I asked.
“To us? Oh, perhaps we shall perish as well. They can also murder
people in our position. Only we shall not be entirely wiped out.
The will of the future will realize itself from what remains of our
influence, or with the aid of those of us who survive. The will of
humanity will make itself felt, which our Europe has for a long time
past tried to drown in its sale yard of scientifically manufactured
articles. And then it will be seen that there is nothing in common
between the will of humanity and that of our present-day communities,
of the states and peoples, of the societies and churches. But what
nature wills with man, is written in the individual few, in you and in
me. It is found in Jesus, in Nietzsche. For these (the only important
currents of thought which naturally can alter their course each day)
there will be place when the present-day communities break up together.”
It was late when we made a halt before a garden by the river.
“We live here,” said Demian. “Come and see us soon! We shall expect
you.”
I cheerfully wended my long way home through the night, which had
become cold. Here and there brawling students were lurching through
the town. I had often felt, sometimes with a feeling of privation,
sometimes with scorn, the contrast between their curious sort of
gaiety and my lonely life. But now, tranquil and strong in a sense of
secret power I felt as never before how little that affected me, how
far removed was their world from mine. I reminded myself of officials
of my native town, worthy old gentlemen, who clung to memories of the
semesters they had passed in drinking, as they would to memories of a
blissful paradise, and who practised a cult, calling up reminiscences
of the vanished “freedom” of their University life with all the
seriousness which some poet or other romantic would devote to an
account of his childhood. Everywhere the same! Everywhere they sought
“liberty” and “happiness” behind them, in the past, for fear of being
reminded of their own responsibility, of being warned they were not
striking out for themselves, but merely going the way of all the world.
Two or three years passed in drinking and jollification, and then they
crept under the common shelter and became serious gentlemen in the
service of the state. Yes, it was rotten, our whole system was rotten
and these student sillinesses were less stupid and not so bad as a
hundred others.
However, when I reached my distant dwelling and went to bed, all these
thoughts had flown. Everything else was in suspense as I looked forward
to the fulfillment of the promise made to me that day. As soon as I
wished, in the morning if I liked, I could see Demian’s mother. Let
the students hold their drinking bouts and tattoo their faces, let the
world be rotten and on the brink of ruin--what had that to do with me?
I was waiting for one single thing, that my fate might meet me in a new
picture.
I woke up late in the morning from a deep sleep. The day broke for
me as a solemn festal day, such as I had not experienced since the
Christmas celebrations of my boyhood. I was full of a deep unrest, yet
entirely without fear. I felt that an important day had broken for
me. I saw and felt the world around me changed: it was full of secret
portent, expectant and solemn. Even the gently falling autumn rain was
beautiful, full of the quiet, glad, serious music of a festal day. For
the first time the outer world was in tune with my inner world--then it
is a feast-day for the soul, then living is worth while! No house, no
shop window, no face in the street disturbed me. Everything was as it
had to be, but did not wear the empty features of every day and of the
habitual. It was like expectant nature, standing full of awe to meet
its fate. Thus, as a little boy, I used to see the world on the morning
of a great feast-day, at Christmas or at Easter. I had not known that
this world could still be so beautiful. I had been accustomed to
living shut up in myself, and to content myself with the idea that my
understanding for the outside world had been lost, that the loss of
glistening colors was inevitably connected with the loss of childish
vision.
So the hour came when I found again that garden in the suburbs, at
the gate of which I had taken leave of Max Demian the night before.
Concealed behind trees in a grey mist of rain stood a little house,
bright and homely, tall flowers stood behind a big glass partition,
and behind shining windows were dark room walls with pictures and
bookcases. The front door led immediately into a little hall, and a
silent old servant, black, with white apron, showed me in and took my
raincoat from me.
She left me alone in the hall. I looked about me. I looked round; and
immediately I was in the middle of my dream. On the dark wood wall
above a door, under glass and in a black frame, hung a picture I knew
well, my bird with the golden yellow hawk’s crest, forcing its way out
of the sphere. Much moved, I remained standing. My heart felt glad and
sorry, as if in that moment everything I had done and had experienced
came back to me as answer and fulfillment. Like a lightning flash a
crowd of pictures passed through my soul: my home, the house of my
father, with the old stone crest over the arch of the door, the boy
Demian drawing the crest, myself as a boy, fearsome under the evil
spell of my enemy Kromer, myself, as a youth, at the table in my little
room at school painting the bird of my dream, the soul caught in a web
of its own weaving, and everything, everything up to this moment found
echo in me again, and was confined, answered, approved.
With misty eyes I stared at my picture and read in the book of my soul.
My glance dropped. In the open door under the picture of the bird stood
a tall lady in a dark dress. It was she.
I could not utter a word. The beautiful woman smiled at me in a
friendly way beneath features like her son’s, timeless and without
age, full of an animated will. Her look was fulfillment, her greeting
meant home-coming. In silence I stretched out my hands to her. She
seized both mine with her strong, warm ones.
“You are Sinclair. I knew you at once. I am very glad to see you!”
Her voice was deep and warm, I drank it in like sweet wine. And now I
looked up in her tranquil face, into the black eyes of unfathomable
depth. I looked at her fresh, ripe mouth, queenly forehead, which bore
the sign.
“How glad I am!” I said to her and kissed her hands. “I believe I have
been on my way all my life long--but now I have come home.”
She smiled in a motherly way.
“One never comes home,” she said gently. “But where friendly roads
converge, the whole world looks for an hour like home.”
She gave expression to what I myself had felt on my way to her.
Her voice and her words were like those of her son, and yet quite
different. Everything was more mature, warmer, more assured. But just
as Max in years past had made on no one the impression of being a mere
boy, so his mother did not look like the mother of a grown-up son, so
young and sweet was the breath of her face and hair, so smooth her
golden skin, so blossoming her mouth. More queenly still than in my
dream she stood before me. Her presence was love’s happiness, her look
was fulfillment.
This, then, was the new picture, in which my fate displayed itself, no
longer severe, no longer isolating, but mature and full of promise.
I took no resolutions, I made no vows. I had attained an end, I had
reached a point of vantage on the way, from which the further road
displayed itself, broad and lovely, leading on to lands of promise,
shaded by treetops of happiness near at hand, cooled by gardens of
delight. Come what might, I was happy to know of this woman’s existence
in the world, to drink in her voice, to sense her presence. Whether she
would be to me mother, mistress, goddess--what mattered it as long as
she was present! As long as my way lay near to hers!
She indicated my picture of the hawk.
“You have never given Max more pleasure than by sending this bird,”
she said musingly. “And I was pleased as well. We expected you, and
when the picture arrived we knew that you were on the way to us. When
you were a little boy, Sinclair, my son came one day from school and
said: ‘There’s a boy who has the sign on his forehead, he must be my
friend.’ That was you. You have not had an easy time of it, but we had
confidence in you. Once in the holidays when you were at home, Max met
you again. You were at that time about sixteen years old. Max told
me----”
I interrupted: “Oh, that he should have told you that. It was the most
miserable time I have had!”
“Yes, Max said to me: ‘Now Sinclair has the hardest time before him. He
is making an attempt to escape to the community, he has even taken to
drinking with the others; but he won’t succeed in that. His sign has
become dulled, but it shines secretly.’ Was not that the case?”
“Oh yes, it was, exactly. Then I found Beatrice, and finally a guide
came to me. His name was Pistorius. For the first time it was clear to
me why my boyhood was so bound up with Max’s, why I could not break
away from him. Dear lady--dear mother, at that time I often thought I
should have to take my life. Is the way so hard for everyone?”
She let her fingers stray through my hair, as gently as if a light
breeze were blowing.
“It is always hard, to be born. You know, it is not without effort that
the bird comes out of the egg. Look back and ask yourself: was the way
then so hard?--only hard? Was it not beautiful as well? Could you have
had one more beautiful, more easy?”